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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |A Theosophist's View of Man's Position and Prospects|10-346}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |A Theosophist's View of Man's Position and Prospects|10-346}} | ||
... | {{Style P-No indent|he would spurn from him with utter scorn the offer of becoming the king of a Deva-Loka, (one of the highest spiritual worlds), for a hundred million years; or any other conceivable blessedness, in exchange, although his power over the material universe has become practically infinite,}} | ||
{{Style P-Poem|poem=“Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, | |||
And multiply each through endless years; | |||
One minute of Heaven is worth them all.”}} | |||
Truly, we yet stand low, very low on one of the rungs of Jacob’s ladder, with its foot in the primeval nebula, and its head in Nirvana. Let us not suppose that one good life can deserve Nirvana, any more than one evil life can deserve eternal suffering. | |||
Howitt once scoffed at a visit to all the worlds in the universe as “rather a long journey.” Granted, but what matters time or space to us if we have an eternal existence before us? All our lives must be connected together; and when we enter a world, we bring our capacities, and I doubt not, our friends with us. The universe being held together by bonds of sympathy, shall it not be the case with spirits from life to life? But I doubt if spiritual affinity depends on sex. Without caring to go into details, I may say that as I interpret well-known facts of physiology, sex is a mere bodily accident, and not inherent in the spirit. Here, in states of society where the sexes are on a comparative equality, we regard the deepest affection as conjugal; but where this is not the case, in ancient and especially in Eastern countries, the deepest affections we read of are not always so. It is clear that Achilles was far more sincerely attached to Patroclus than to Briseis, and that David was far more attached to Jonathan than to Michal. The deepest affection, too, may sometimes exist between relatives; as in the curious instance cited by Miss Blackwell, of a mother and daughter, who were so deeply attached that when the former died, she immediately sought and obtained permission to reincarnate herself as her daughter’s child. | |||
Let us not be led astray by the contracted horizons and the narrow ideas of the past, but let us look upon the past and future as becomes beings with infinite possibilities before us, in an infinite universe, if we will only free ourselves from prejudice, and work and wait patiently, without hoping for or grasping at everything at once. | |||
<center>{{Style S-Small capitals|additional note.}}</center> | |||
It is sometimes argued that the other planets, and much more the suns, are too hot or too cold to support life; but I think it more reasonable to believe that all, or nearly all the planets are inhabited by beings adapted to their physical condition. Still less can I suppose life to be absent in the suns, themselves the centres of life to the planets around them. They are probably the abode either of the spirits controlling the systems, or of spirits not wholly free from the last link binding them to the materiality of the system which they at present inhabit.* Even the prose Edda tells us that “those not indigenous thereto cannot enter Muspellheim.” Of course nothing material as we understand the word could inhabit even the superior planets, much less the suns. | |||
{{Footnotes start}} | |||
<nowiki>*</nowiki> The Gods and their avators are always symbolised by the sun. | |||
{{Footnotes end}} | |||
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| continues = 348, 348.1 | | continues = 348, 348.1 | ||
| author = De Steiger, Isabel. F.T.S. | | author = De Steiger, Isabel. F.T.S. | ||
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}} | }} | ||
... | <center>{{Style S-Small capitals|by isabel de steiger.}} {{Style S-HPB SB. HPB note |F.T.S.}}</center> | ||
<center>(''Concluded''.)</center> | |||
{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|10-348}} | Modern Spiritualism, even in its best form, is but a step in the right direction; but as it now is it can never reform mankind. It must lead us on to a higher platform than that on which we are now standing. At present, while still sunk low in our materialism, we are trying to contemplate angels, when we ought first to reach the higher platform by the elevation and awakening of our own spirits; as it is, we can only sink on our knees in utter abasement and cry for wisdom; for not until we know the strength and potency of the spirit of man incarnated on earth now, can we understand that of disembodied ones, and still less, can we know that of angels. Nearly all Spiritualists feel that there is abundant proof {{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|10-348}} | ||
{{HPB-SB-footer-footnotes}} | {{HPB-SB-footer-footnotes}} | ||